she lives again!

Back in November, the engine in my MR-S had a piston catastrophically grenade itself into thousands of little pieces. Since then, it had been sitting in the garage collecting dust and waiting for another engine to replace it. Earlier this year, myself along with a few very good friends spent an afternoon pulling apart the back side of my car just to get things started. We found that the piston in cylinder 4 shot through the oil pan as well as through the side of the block, destroying the starter along with it.

Notice in the passenger side wheel well is a larger oil cooler than previously. The old one was placed poorly and was only 1/2 the size. This placement should get better cooling from the side vent.

I had contemplated a number of variations to go with. Perhaps a 2gr-fe, v6 engine from a late model camry. On paper it sounds great. 260 some horsepower and torques on a 2200lb mid engine car? Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be easy. I decided to stick with the simple 2zz-ge platform. Since the engine harness was hacked and put together hastily, I took the liberty to undo all of the factory looming and tape to replace with Expando nylon loom. This also gave me the opportunity to extend and fix some of the wires which were exposed due to rubbing.

This is what the engine harness started as.

New sleeving and fresh connectors!

Here’s Wes setting up the hoist to have the transmission mate to the engine.

A replacement engine was purchased and opened up for minor inspection. This low mileage engine was showing no sign of damage so in it went. In all entirety, the engine was installed in just a little bit over 5 hours. Not so bad considering we didn’t really know what we were doing.

Ready for a supersonic install!

We filled the engine with oil and all the other fluids and at the first try, the engine starts, and it started strong. The garage was filled with smiles and relief. At long last we overcame this huge obstacle.

The meters say the engine is spinning at 1500rpm.

The next day, I installed my newly acquired VIS carbon fiber hardtop. Fitment is pretty good. I’ll be leaving the rear window off to reduce turbulence.

Also just for kicks, I now have music in the car.

The exhaust I had on was quite poorly modified, by myself of course. So I carefully measured and cut new 2.5″ piping and redid the second half of the exhaust. Now it looks good.

Extra thanks to Wes, Brian, Sean, Myke380, Kevin, Gary, and everyone who didn’t want to be mentioned. Couldn’t have done it without you guys!